


July 31st

by mumfordtime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 19:52:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumfordtime/pseuds/mumfordtime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early morning in Little Whinging, Surrey.<br/>A stranger appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	July 31st

The quaint suburban street hadn't seen adventure for years. The drive, located in Surrey, England, was lined by dull brick houses, and in the mid-summer air, all was silent as the government workers and dentists and their unremarkable children slept. It was three in the morning when the street lights began to flicker, and then altogether extinguish. The average people in their average homes failed to notice.

The wind blew lightly against the stranger’s back. His long coat rippled in the breeze as he walked alone, a slight limp slowing his steps. The stranger stopped, plunking down onto the road and crossing his legs nimbly, shoving a lighter into his pocket. His coat was richly embroidered with stars and vines winding atop blue velvet. His boots were weathered, thick leather straps securing them to his feet. He looked up at the night sky, his face wrinkled and freckled. His hair fell just above his shoulders, and reached across his face in a rugged beard of sharp orange and vivid white. He looked across at the home before him, a golden number four hung beside the dull brown door.

"Number four Privet Drive _,_ " the stranger mumbled to himself, "Why in bloody hell did I decide to come here?"

The stranger continued gazing at the door, and then up to the upper right hand window, now free of bars, with pink floral drapes hanging limp.

_He’s dead. Harry Potter is dead._

The stranger reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out a piece of browned parchment and a blue ball point pen he’d stolen from the café he’d been to earlier that day. He scrawled a messy note, and reached into his pocket once more. A long spindly stick of dark wood emerged in his hand; a wand. He twiddled it around in his hand, observing how the wand twisted and turned against the dim light of porch lights up and down the street. He began to remember the night he and his brothers flew up to the window currently so garishly decorated with the floral curtains to rescue his best friend from the totalitarian grip of his aunt and uncle. He remembered the rage in Vernon Dursley’s eyes, right before he fell strait from the window. The stranger chuckled, but the back of his eyes burned.

He strode slowly to the front hedge of Number four, the very flower bed that Harry Potter’s uncle had fallen into so many years ago. He began to dig with his weathered hands into the dry dirt. After digging for two minutes or so, there was a hole wide and deep enough to contain the wand. The stranger rolled the note, slipping the wand through the center of the scroll. He placed it nimbly in the ground, returned the dirt atop it, and slowly stood up to look down at the newly turned mound he’d created in the plant bed.

The stranger stood still, staring down at his work; a small memorial for a lost friend. He turned and walked back to his place in the centre of the drive, and stood there silently, breathing in the early morning air as a flock of birds began to stir in a tree across the lane. The stranger pulled his lighter from his pocket, lifting it high above his head and flicking it open. The stranger was gone before the last streetlamp lit back up, leaving only a tear on the cracked pavement of the perfectly normal street in the perfectly normal town which hadn't seen adventure for years.

The small letter hid below the soil read:

_Harry Potter is dead, but the Order of Phoenix lives._

_RW_

_P.S. happy birthday mate._


End file.
